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GENARO ARMAS and MARK SCOLFORO

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — Joe Paterno defended his football program's integrity in a 7-month-old letter released Wednesday, a day ahead of a report that could forever mar his legacy.

In the letter, written shortly before his death and confirmed as legitimate by his family, Paterno rejected the notion that Jerry Sandusky's sexual abuse of boys amounted to a "football scandal" or in any way tarnished the accomplishments of his players or Penn State's reputation as a whole.

BELLEFONTE, Pa. — Jerry Sandusky was either a "predatory pedophile" who lured young boys to Penn State with gifts and access to big-time football, or a victim of now-grown men who lied to get a payout, attorneys argued Thursday as the former coach's child sex abuse case went to a jury.

BELLEFONTE, Pa. — The prosecution's case in Jerry Sandusky's sex abuse trial neared its conclusion on Thursday after just four days of testimony, with three more accusers taking the witness stand, including a young man who said the former Penn State assistant football coach raped him as a teen guest in Sandusky's home.

BELLEFONTE, Pa. — One, a foster child, said he was threatened, warned he would never see his family again if he ever told anyone what happened. Another said he stayed quiet because he didn't want to stop getting tickets to the hottest game in town — Penn State football.

That was how two of Jerry Sandusky's accusers explained the former Penn State assistant coach's hold over them.

"He told me that if I ever told anyone that I'd never see my family again," the former foster child said Wednesday, the third day of testimony in Sandusky's child sexual abuse trial.

BELLEFONTE, Pa. — A former Penn State assistant coach who was a central figure in Joe Paterno's downfall testified Tuesday that he heard a "skin-on-skin smacking sound" in a campus locker room one night in 2001 and saw something that was "more than my brain could handle."

Jerry Sandusky was standing naked in the showers behind a boy, slowly moving his hips, Mike McQueary told the jury.

BELLEFONTE, Pa. — Jerry Sandusky's trial in the Penn State scandal opened in graphic fashion Monday with the first witness testifying that the retired coach molested him in the locker-room showers and in hotels while trying to ensure his silence with gifts and trips to bowl games.

The man, now 28 and dubbed Victim 4 in court papers, left nothing to the imagination as he told the jury about the abuse he said he endured for five years beginning when he was a teenager in the late 1990s.

After nine of the 12 main jurors were seated, their ranks included a longtime football season ticket holder, a rising senior in the university, a man with bachelor's and master's degrees from the university and a soil sciences professor who retired after 37 years there.

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — Prosecutors asked Tuesday to have Jerry Sandusky kept indoors as part of his bail conditions, citing complaints that the former Penn State football assistant was seen outside and watching children in a schoolyard from the back porch of his home, where he remains under house arrest while awaiting trial on child molestation charges.

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — Two top Penn State officials charged with covering up allegations of an explosive child-sex abuse scandal related to former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky stepped down late Sunday after an emergency meeting of the university’s Board of Trustees.